


Beautiful Liar

by wino (thimble)



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 02:43:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17479715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/wino
Summary: Everything is foreign, everything except the boy who calls out his name on the court, the two of them finding each other so often it can’t be anything but destiny.





	Beautiful Liar

He’s a child when he’s uprooted from the first place he calls home, old enough to remember what he leaves behind, but not old enough to remember well. The world has always seemed big for someone still so small, but this new country seems even bigger, from the size of its fast food to its people. The foreignness of everything is lonely, but mostly he wishes that what he’s supposed to miss is not just a hazy memory.

 

* * *

 

His parents aren’t the neglectful sort, which is the reason he could never quite find it in himself to resent them for taking him so far away. They notice his isolation, despite how he’d tried to hide it, and one day, seemingly out of nowhere, they gift him with a basketball—an apology, he’ll realize when he’s older. It seems they’d noticed how curiously he’d looked at the street courts, how desperately he’d wanted a way to breach the language barrier. They’re the ones to encourage him to learn to speak with something other than words, and though they come to him in time, he doesn’t quite stop relying on the ball to do some of the talking for him.

 

* * *

 

Later, Taiga will say that he was the first to see him, but he knows the truth, and the truth is that he hadn’t really been looking for anyone other than another set of hands to complete the game, not until he stumbled upon a boy with eyes so much like his when he first came here, so much that it was like seeing himself in the mirror. He couldn’t help it—lonely recognizes lonely. He couldn’t help helping someone so lost find their way, just as he couldn’t help answering in kind when he’s likened to an older brother.

 

* * *

 

Taiga also takes credit for seeing her first, and he doesn’t argue. It was Taiga who’d spotted her in a street court, handling the ball as if it had her name written on it, but it was him who’d recognized her off TV and magazine appearances alike. It was him, too, who’d gotten the idea to adopt her as their mentor, though of course the real adoption happens the other way around.

 

Neither of them argue when she starts to call them her own.

 

* * *

 

Life happens, and they lose touch between house moves and graduation. When they meet again, inevitably, it’s Taiga who approaches him, this time, taller and broader now but with the same wide grin, the same bright eyes. This time, Taiga’s team wins the match, but he takes victory back in the next. Over and over, across summer and the school year, they snatch the metaphorical trophy from each other’s grasp. Over and over, he realizes that the boy who followed him for as long as they’ve known each other is starting to race ahead.

 

He decides, on his own, that that can’t happen; decides, on his own, that they can’t be brothers any longer. Taiga, whose soft heart never quite aligned with the roughness of his hands, doesn’t understand, and it only makes him angrier. How dare Taiga throw the game. How dare he leave before it’s settled. How dare he be better; didn’t Tatsuya do all of this first?

 

* * *

 

He’s no longer a child when he’s uprooted again, returning to the home he’d left that doesn’t really feel like it anymore. Everything is foreign, again—everything except for the game. It’s only natural that he gravitates towards the club, even if he’s not yet allowed to play. It’s natural, too, that he finds someone else to look after, someone else who trails after him, even if Atsushi would never quite admit to it.

 

Everything is foreign, everything except the boy who calls out his name on the court, the two of them finding each other so often it can’t be anything but destiny.

 

* * *

 

He wants to think he’s destined to win, but there’s no such thing. That Yosen dominates their initial matches of Winter Cup is reassuring; that he stands with a strong team is all he can ask for. The rest is up to him, and everything he’s given up to be where he is. In the beginning, it seems as if the game is in his favor, Taiga’s reluctance to fight him aside. It seems as if his hard work will pay off, the Mirage Shot stunning his team and Seirin alike.

 

It seems as if he might finally get his due—and he does, but not in the way he’d hoped. Taiga sheds their brotherhood, and with it his last hesitations. As he’d suspected, it had only burdened both of them, but the satisfaction from being proven right is paltry compared to the bitterness of the truth: try as he might, he’ll never be extraordinary. This is as far as he’ll ever go, and when Atsushi says as much, his patented composure finally, finally crumbles.

 

If there ever is such a thing as destiny, it isn’t smiling at him; he never should have expected life to be fair.

 

* * *

 

Seirin wins, but it’s not just his loss. His senpai have to graduate without the trophy under their belt, and Atsushi has tasted defeat for the first time. It’s comforting as much as it is sobering, and it occurs to him that maybe, just maybe, none of what he’d done to get to this place was ever worth it.

 

When he tells her so, Alex only smiles; despite what he’d said to her, that smile says that she’d never stopped thinking of him as her own.

 

* * *

 

It’s only been days since their match, but it feels so much longer. Taiga asks to meet him and once again they end up at a street court, though empty except for each other.

 

There’s an apology on the tip of Taiga’s tongue and he rushes to beat it to the punch, his ruefulness years in the making. There’s so much he wants to say—that he regrets the time he’d wasted fighting, that he’s proud to have watched him grow, and that he never stopped thinking of them as brothers despite it all—but he settles for saying that he’d be there to watch Taiga win.

 

(And it doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would, when Taiga eventually does.)

 

* * *

 

Araki-sensei appoints him as the next captain, a long way away from the foreign, aloof returnee he was just months ago. And though there’s nothing permanent about it, leaving him only another year to leave his mark on the team, he’s grateful for how it roots him, letting him feel like he’s doing just fine. He’s right where he needs to be.


End file.
